Frequent Miler on the Air - 240x post mortem

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

The American Airlines SimplyMiles deal to earn 240 miles per dollar donated to charity was ultimately honored, but when we recorded this week's episode we didn't yet know it would be. We looked back at how we handled it in terms of what we published (and didn't), how much we donated, and our takeaways for next time. 00:50 Giant Mailbag: A personal story 4:27 Giant Mailbag #2: A glance back at some predictions 7:32 What crazy thing...did Chase do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/chase-launches-ink-business-premier-in-branch/ 12:32 Matress running the numbers: When does the new Chase Ink Business Premier make sense? 18:47 Main Event: 240x Post-Mortem https://frequentmiler.com/incredible-the-240x-simplymiles-deal-is-being-honored/ https://frequentmiler.com/5x-on-simplymiles-offers-awesome-deals/ https://frequentmiler.com/american-airlines-simplymiles-complete-guide-common-questions-answered/ 55:50 Post Roast 56:55 Question of the Week: Can you use Amex's Plan It feature to split payments and trigger two Fine Hotels & Resorts credits on a a single hotel stay? Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, 240X post-mortem. You're going to do an autopsy today? I'm a little squeamish, Greg. Yeah. We're going to be diving into that Simply Miles deal that was simply spectacular if it pays out. Maybe by the time this publishes, it'll turn out to have been spectacular. Yeah. So we'll talk all about that deal, why we jumped in the way we did, why we wrote about it the way we did, or didn't write about it in the way we did, and so on and so forth. First, of course, Giant Mailbag.

For Giant Mailbag today, I've got two things going on. First is a little personal story. So during the show, you might notice me sniffle, cough, blow my nose, whatever. I am enduring cold symptoms. And so I went the other day to get COVID tested. And I drove there with some trepidation, but not for the reason you'd think. Where are we going with this? Okay. All right. Well, to understand why it scared me to drive to the COVID test,

I got a new car in January. That's scary, huh? And a few months after that, we were driving the new car to get our first vaccine shots and a rock bounced off a dump truck and hit our windshield, cracked it. Brand new car had a crack in the windshield. Ouch. Not the end of the world, but it was, you don't want that happening to your brand new car. Okay. Fast forward to almost exactly a month ago, just over a month ago, I had a similar situation. I had a cold and our cold symptoms and I booked a test and it was a pretty fall day. So I decided to take a scenic route to the testing center to look at all the fall colors. And yeah. And it turned out that fall day was a literally

inaccurate name for that day because as I was driving a great big tree limb fell right onto my car. That's crazy. We didn't get to what crazy thing happened this week yet. Right. I mean, this isn't the what crazy segment is it? It bounced off your car. It bounced off. My car still drove fine. I could see as I was driving, there was a new crack in the windshield, but I didn't know if anything else was damaged. When I got to the testing site, I looked, I parked and looked at the car and there was some damage and it took quite a while for the body shop to get the parts they needed to fix everything you're driving around i just got it back just got it back a few days ago no no and so now it was like oh wait don't even need to go

it tested covid has been so dangerous to my car. And so it scared me, but I made it there and back. No new damage to the car. Well, three cheers to that. All's well that ends well, right? Yeah. Well, except I got the test results back and I am positive. You're positive that you're negative? Yeah. No, I have COVID. So it's pretty mild, you know, as I said, just cold symptoms. So far, I haven't lost smell or taste, but I've heard from some people that that comes later. So hopefully that won't happen. But, you know, I think because I was vaccinated, it's pretty mild. And yeah, so that's why I might be sniffling, coughing, sneezing, whatever, during the show. I'm glad to hear that. It's mild. I, uh, I'm obviously

hoping for the best in a speedy recovery there. So I'm sorry to hear that you have it at all, but, but good thing you were vaccinated and it should hopefully be a nice, easy, you know, yeah. Easy time for you. I think so. Right, right. Okay, so let's get into the other part of the giant mail bag is not giant mail, but rather it's another sort of message from me. I look back at a show we did about two months ago, I think, called Chase Battles for the Middle. In that show,

we were talking about how Citi seems to have staked their claim to low-end cars, fee-free and $95 at the most. Amex seems to be camping out at the very high end and keeps making their cards more and more expensive. And Chase had been introducing these mid-market cards, $200, $250. And so that's what we were talking about. Chase seems to be going for that angle. And so I wanted to mention some predictions we made during that show because it's very relevant to what's going on today okay so first we noted during the show that that all of those mid-market cards so far had been co-branded cards and i think it was you asked do we expect to see an ultimate rewards card in that middle market? And your answer was no, I don't expect to, but I'd like to. And my answer was, I don't see it. They've doubled down in the ultimate rewards cards on fee-free and $95 cards. Can't see them going with a $200-ish card.

Why do people even ask for our predictions, Greg? Why do they ask for our predictions? Wait, wait, there's more. Wait, wait, there's more. I volunteered a separate prediction that I said, Chase is going to be coming out soon with an Aeroplan card, and I bet you that will be a mid-market $200-ish card. So, okay. Fast forward to recent days. I promise we're better at the analysis after the fact than we are about the prediction ahead of time. We can predict the heck out of things that have already happened, but not so good at things that have already happened.

Yeah, people should stop listening to anything we predict. It's completely ridiculous. But as you know, as some of our audience knows, Aeroplane card came out $95. And a new Ultimate Rewards card came out $195. Right in that mid-market spot. I mean, we would call that mid-market, wouldn't we? Exactly. It would.

Yeah, we would. More or less right there, smack dab in the middle between a $95 card and a $400 or $500 card, right? Yeah. I mean, the thing that the thing that motivated our whole discussion was the 195 dollar hyatt business card so if that's not right in the middle you know i don't know what is that's exactly what it is so yeah so we were completely wrong on all counts but except for the bigger premise which chase is staking out that middle

ground for better or worse maybe worse we'll talk more about that in this case in this case we got some worse going on which brings us to what crazy thing what did chase do this week and so this week they came out with that exact mid-market ultimate rewards ish card the chase Business. I don't know. There you go. There's the adjective. Not to be confused with Inc. Business Preferred. Or Inc. Business Plus. Or Inc. Business Plus, the old one. They've got a thing for those words that start with P. I don't know what it is, Chase, but stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. So we've been, we've been a lot of people abbreviate the ink business preferred, the

older card as IBP or sometimes C-IBP meaning Chase Ink Business Preferred. So now we've got this new ink business premiere. We can't call it IBP. So I do have a suggestion. I have two suggestions. Okay. The first one. Because we just never write about it because it stinks.. So I do have a suggestion. I have two suggestions. Okay. The first one. Because we just never write about it because it stinks.

Well, that's a good idea. That's not the first one. The first one is the logical one. IVP 2. And the 2 has two meanings. It's the second IVP, even though it's really the third. But it also, it's a 2% everywhere card. So, you know, it has two meanings there.

So that's one option. But here's the one I like better. IBM, Inc. Business Minus. Inc. Business Minus. That definitely seems like a fitting title for this, you know, just festering garbage of a card that I, well, we'll talk more about it i don't know maybe i'm maybe harsh but well let's talk let's talk about it now so first of all the

card earns ultimate rewards right technically even though it's advertised as a cash back card but they've completely hamstrung it so you can't transfer those points to airline or hotel partners. You can't move the points to another chase card. Like you can't move them to your Sapphire reserve card in order to get 1.5 cents per point value and or to transfer, you know, so they've really made it literally just a cashback card. And that's about all you can do. Isn't that weird? I mean, isn't that strange that they've had all these cards,

they market as cashback cards forever. The, you know, the Freedom cards, you know, so Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, now the Freedom Flex. Then on the business side, the Ink Plus, the Ink Cash, the Ink Unlimited, all marketed as though they earn cashback,

even though it's all ultimate rewards and you can put all the points together. What's going on here? I mean, what's the deal? They're creating another one with ultimate rewards, but this is the one exception where you cannot combine them with anything else. And you went, I mean, to some lengths to confirm that too, right? I mean, you're very sure. I did. I did. It's not like a yes, right? Or pretty sure. Well, I'm sure that Chase intends that. So, so, you know, it's, it's in chase's system, like explicitly for the chase reps to read, you know, the, the details about it's in like

printed documentation that, that the points cannot be, they call it combining when you move your points from one card to another, they can't be combined with any other card. So it's pretty explicit and the online documentation shows no option for transferring to partners. So that's pretty explicit as well in leaving that out. So I'm pretty sure. And so my initial, it's too bad because my initial look at it was despite it having $195 fee, it had a way to get 2X or 2.5X everywhere. And that would be pretty exciting if it was ultimate rewards points. It would. It would if it was ultimate rewards points.

I mean, it is, but it's not. Right, right, right, right. It was ultimate rewards points you could do something with other than redeem for one cent each. And so as it stands, the card earns 2X, which is really just a flat 2% cash back everywhere and 2.5% on purchases over $5,000, right? So if you make a lot of big purchases, it's a 2.5% cash back card. I mean, that's respectable. That's good. It's not necessarily industry leading, but it's quite good.

2% though, I mean, who's paying $195 a year for a 2% cash back card? I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to me. Right. No, it doesn't make any sense. You know, if you're insisting on having a business card and unlimited rewards, Capital One has their $95, what is it called again? Spark Cash. And so you can get the 2% for $100 less. And then if you also have a venture or a Spark Miles card, you could convert that cash to miles and transfer it to partners. So $100 less and worth a lot more in my opinion.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. Good point. So should we jump into sort of our mattress segment? Sure, let's do it. Because that's the crazy part. The crazy part is they introduced this garbage-y looking card. We're going to talk about this card.

And yeah, let's talk about mattress segment. I mean, I say it's garbage-y looking, but it probably appeals to at least a certain segment. So, I mean, what's the deal here? Is it worth it? I think there are certain people the IBM card is right for them. And let me start with, you've got to have business with large expenses. So, you're going to be putting a lot of money through it because there are plenty of fee-free cards, even on the business side that will give you like two X rewards and

more valuable rewards for no annual fee. But usually those are capped. Like, so for example, the, the, the Amex blue business plus, or the Blue Business Cash, they both earn two extra rewards on all spend up to $50,000 a year. This one's uncapped. So if you have like large uncapped expenses and then, well, even then, why not go with Capital One? It would only, in my opinion, it would only be if, well, one, you can't get approved by Capital One, which is, I guess, a real scenario. But two is, if you're going to spend $20,000 or more per year in that $5,000 and up category, so you're getting 2.5% instead of 2%, if you know you're going to spend that much in that

category, you're going to clear more than $100 extra. And so it could be worth paying that higher annual fee. If you compare to a flat 2% fee-free card, then you'd have to spend about $40,000 in that um 5k and up per purchase category in order for it to be worth it and if you have if you're if you're you know if you're right on the edge i wouldn't worry about getting this card but if you're well above that if you expect to be well above the 40k then i i think it's it it makes sense unless unless you have a business relationship with Bank of America. Because you can do better. You can do better. So Bank of America, if you have 100K or more in business banking, so either savings or it could be in stocks on Merrill Edge's side, but it has to be business accounts, then you'll qualify for

their platinum preferred honors thingy on the business side. And that's important because then if you get their, they have a few cards that'll do this, but their business advantage unlimited cash rewards card will give you normally just one and a half percent cash back. But because of this platinum preferred honors thing you would get with having 100K in banking with them, you get a 75% bump on that. It goes up to 2.62% on all spend, and it's a business card, fee-free. Fee-free. And it beats what you can do if you jump through the hoops with Chase on the 5K purchases. So, I mean, that's a

much better option for businesses that have enough cash on hand to be able to do that. Now, I say that, and there's, I guess, another category of people that this might work for, and that's those with really, really high expenses, because you're probably going to be somewhat limited by a credit limit on whatever card it is, whether it's your Spark Cash or this Bank of America business cash wards that we're talking about, because you may not be able to cycle that limit an infinite number of times. Every billing cycle, it may be A, inconvenient, or B, the bank may not like it. And the quote-unquote advantage, perhaps, of this Chase card is that it is a, uh, like a charge card,

essentially, uh, they call it a pay in full card. So like, sort of like the Amex platinum and business platinum and that sort of thing where there's really no preset spending limit. It just has to do with your patterns. I mean, I've known people that have charged monthly in the six figures on a business platinum card without an issue. Whereas you probably, I think, would have an issue with that on a typical bank credit card. So that may be one area if you're somebody that imports stuff or you got a business that runs a lot of money through. So you are spending $100,000, $200,000 a month or something like that. Then maybe this Chase card would make more sense because it'd be a lot easier to deal with probably. Right, right, right. This kind of reminds me of our regular Matches Running the Numbers segments where we talk about hotel promos,

where we say, it's not for most people, but if you're in this- There's an outlier group. Unusual situation. Yeah, but exactly. I mean, it obviously applies to such a small, limited number of people. Although, limited number of people, although a limited number of people who have legitimate businesses that buy a lot of inventory or whatever. So it's not totally unreasonable for Chase to create a product that works for that crowd, right? I mean, because there are obviously people that will use that. So, and for those people, the card will probably make sense. But for those of us that collect points because we just enjoy maximizing things, I don't see much enjoyment here at all.

No, not at all. Unless you really want to gamble and hope that someday they'll open it up to transfers. And then that's, I guess, theoretically possible. And even the welcome bonus doesn't particularly excite me. It's 100,000 points after 10K spend. And I mean, that's obviously good. It's nice. $1,000 on 10,000 spend. So you net $800 after the, well, a little more because you're getting 2X on that spend. Yeah.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's not wildly exciting, though. And you've got the fee-free ink cash and ink unlimited. And you can get both of those cards and pay zero in annual fees. And for a little bit more combined spend, end up with more points, end up with $150,000,

$1,500 that you can also then combine and transfer. So I just, I don't know. I can't get excited about this new ink business minus card. Right. All right. Are you ready for the main event? Welcome to the main event. The main event, 240X postmortem. Now, you want to talk about something I can get excited about? It's this 240X promo. That sounds a lot better than 2X, doesn't it? All right. Why don't you tell us what the heck we're talking about? 240X. That sounds like a big number. I mean, we've been excited before

about 15X. We throw that around a lot. What's this 240X stuff? 240X is the stuff of legend. It's not exactly what you see every day. And it was a wild promo. So American Airlines has something called Simply Miles. And Simply Miles is a card-linked offers program for people with MasterCards. Think like Amex offers or Chase offers, but for MasterCards. And instead of giving you cash back, it gives you American Airlines miles. So it's a pretty simple system. You sign up with Simply Miles with any MasterCard, and then you sync offers. You can load a few MasterCards to your account and you sync offers. And usually they're offers like stay at an IHG

hotel and get a thousand airline miles for a hundred dollars spent or spend 200 bucks at Best Buy. Definitely worth doing, but not a huge. Right. And in many cases, it's like an extra two miles per dollar, just like other in-store offers in store offers so again like you said not bad if you value american airlines miles however they ran a promotion they started last week that was absolutely incredible and it's actually a repeated promotion they ran a couple of years ago and so the way this promotion works is they 5x everything and so what that means is you are going to earn, were going to, I want to make that very clear because this is over, it's long over, but you were going to earn five times the stated reward in addition to that stated reward. A lot of people confused this when they

first saw it and thought that American was saying you're going to earn an extra five miles per dollar, but that's not it at all. They gave a very concrete example in their email to say you're going to earn five times the amount. So for example, the example they gave was if you had an offer to spend $30 at a merchant and earn a hundred American airlines miles with this promotion, you would actually earn 600 American airlines miles because you would earn that 100 plus five times the 100. So 600 total, which doesn't sound too bad. And in fact, there were some situations where that became great. Like there was a Best Buy offer where you could earn 15,000 American Airlines miles for a $200

purchase. You're basically earning your miles back. You're earning your purchase back in the form of miles if you value those miles at more than a penny each. So lots of good stuff like that. But the headline offer, the crazy thing, the incredible promotion was that there was a charity in the list, Conservation International, that was offering 40 American Airlines miles per dollar donated as the base rate. So that's four zero, 40 miles per dollar. And if you do math and you know, five times 40 is 200. So when you add that on top of the 40, we were talking 240 American Airlines miles per dollar donated. So that's where our title 240X comes from. That's it. Came full circle, got all the way back around to the 240X. So that's a pretty incredible opportunity. So that's phenomenal. Because if you think of it as like, imagine American Airlines miles are worth only a penny each. That's like getting $2.40 back for every dollar you donate. Right. You did the math right on that one. Yeah. Like I said, we're much better at the analysis than the prediction folks. So this part we've got down.

So yeah, I mean, that's what, I mean, that's amazing. If any day of the week, somebody came up to you and said, all right, for every dollar you give me, I'm going to give you $2.40. You would probably first be very skeptical, but then second, you'd be like, okay, let's do it all day long. Right. And so some people do it. Right. Right. Right. And so it's like buying miles at what was it again? 4.4 or something like that. Less than half a cent each. Let's call it that. Right. Which, again, if you value American Airlines miles at anything, that's absolutely amazing. I mean, you look at some of the different options, like, I don value American Airlines miles in anything, that's absolutely amazing. I mean, you look at some of the different options, like, I don't know, business class to a bunch of parts of Asia, like 60-ish thousand miles.

So you're talking at four-tenths of a cent, what, like $240 worth of miles? It's going to cost you $240 to generate the number of miles you need for a business class ticket to Asia? What? I mean, there were some amazing things like that. Yeah. It's insane. So I guess we should mention that it's over. Right. As noted. That's why we're calling this a post-mortem. It's the deal. Which isn't surprising. It died very quickly. So we posted it last Saturday, December 11th. So we posted the fact that Simply Miles had this 5X offer, and we had seen the charity offer and did the math on our own and realized the 240X and thought

that was pretty insane. But we didn't headline that. We just explained that there were lots of offers that were worth logging in to check for. We gave some examples in the post, and then we left it up to readers to find the great deals, or the great deal as the case may be really here. And then about 24 hours later, some other blogs noticed, of course, and wrote about the charity offer,

which took off from there. Right, right. Okay, so let's talk first about why did we not highlight that? I mean, that was an incredible deal. Why not tell our readers right off the bat? I mean, well, no, I mean, truth be told, I'll, I'll put it right out here. That was Greg's perspective from the beginning. It was like, well, you know, why wouldn't we headline with this? And so we talked about it because we do talk about these things sometimes. And so, you know, Greg and Steven and I discussed how to handle it.

And, you know, I had a couple of reservations with headlining the charity offer. Number one. So it was you being mean. Yes, it was more mean. That's what you're saying. I'll lay some blame at the foot of Steven Pepper for Greg. Oh, go ahead. And because he's not here to defend himself.

Right, right. For Steven. So, yeah, I had some hesitation with that. There were a few things. First of all, I thought that it was possible this doesn't get honored. And so we headline that and readers go and donate a lot of money and then it doesn't get honored. And they come with their pitchforks for me when I can't guarantee that an American is going to honor this. Now, there's a lot of times, there's a lot of situations where there are deals that are so good that I don't know that an American is going to honor this. Now, there's a lot of times, there's a lot of situations where there are deals that are so good that I don't know that it's going to be honored and I do write about them.

But in this case, there was such a disparity between reality and this deal. It seemed dangerous. And so part of me was like, oh, people are going to get burned on this and then they're going to come after me. It's not worth it. They can find it and be adults and make their decision if they want to do it. So that was part of it. Bigger part was that I know there are some heavy hitters in this game.

There are people that some people that earn enough money that can really benefit from the tax deduction potentially. And I say potentially, there's a lot of talk to your accountant as to whether or not you can deduct it and at what rate. But I knew that there were people that would look at it from that perspective and say, oh, wow, I should donate five thousand or ten thousand or twenty thousand or probably even more dollars than that. And by millions and millions of miles. And American Airlines said that the promotion would last until December 27th or while supplies last of the bonus miles. So the extra five X bonus miles, they made clear with their wording were a limited pool. And once that limited pool was exhausted, then the promotion was going to get pulled. And I knew that if we headlined on Saturday morning, that you could earn 240 miles per dollar donated that by

Saturday afternoon, all of those miles would have to be eaten up, right? I mean, the heavy hitters would go hard. People that aren't all that heavy, but heavy enough would start going in on it. And then you'd have everybody and their brother and cousin donating at least a few hundred dollars saying, wow, look at all these miles I can earn. And that starts to add up pretty quickly. So I just didn't think it could possibly last.

And I thought that we were going to kill it. And really the promotion overall was quite good. Like if you wanted to buy something at Best Buy, the example I just gave was a fantastic opportunity. And there were a lot of other ones like that. And I thought, you know, I put this out there in too broad of a way. If I shot it from the rooftops, then people are going to kill this with the charity thing. And people who otherwise would have gotten a good deal on some holiday gifts or whatever else are going to kill this with the charity thing. And people who otherwise would have gotten a good deal on some holiday gifts or whatever else are going to be shut out because this thing is going to die quick. Right.

Right. So it, it, it theoretically kept it alive for about another day before, before some of the big blocks picked it up. Right. Right. And in hindsight,

I should note that, well, you know what? I'll come back to that. Let me, let me not even say that. I'll come back to that idea. So I don't know that that was, that was, well, there was one other

concern we discussed, but we don't think it's true, which is we were worried that the charity itself would have to pay for these miles. We're pretty sure we got information that, that we, we don't think that's the case, but, but we weren't, we weren't 100% sure. Exactly. At that time, we had no idea. So I should say, Yeah. I mean, we didn't think, you know, like how could Simply Miles, when it's running its own 5X promotion, charge the vendors that are listed on Simply Miles? But we didn't know for sure that they couldn't. So there were a few reasons there that we said, you know what, maybe we shouldn't headline that, but we can make it clear that there are deals worth logging in for and people can find it. They can do the math and figure it out. Preston Pyshko Right. Right. So readers who read carefully, figured it out on their own. Readers who read the comments would have seen the 240x deal in

the comments. So it was available to everybody to see or to find pretty easily actually. David Gardner Right. I mean, when you scroll through the offers, it was there. And I should mention, by the way, that if you had an existing account, you would see that. If you had created a brand new account on Saturday after we wrote the post, you would not have seen that offer. Because for some reason, brand new accounts don't see all of the offers right away. It takes a few days before all of the offers populate. So if you logged in on Saturday after you read it and you're like, oh, I didn't see that. It takes a few days before all of the offers populate. So, uh, so if you logged

in on Saturday after you read it and you were like, Oh, I didn't see that. It wasn't on my account. It must've been targeted. You just had to wait a couple of days and then it did come up. And so speaking of waiting a couple of days, I'm Monday morning view from the wing was able to confirm with American airlines that this was not a mistake, that it was going to be honored, that they understood it was 240 miles per dollar donated. And they were like, yeah, while supplies last guys. Preston Pyshko Yeah. And Tuesday morning, whoever said that to Gary was fired. Trey Lockerbie It was out of the office.

Preston Pyshko We don't know that. Trey Lockerbie Taking a little vacation. Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't know why. Perhaps just, they have great timing and they knew they didn't want to wake up to all the phone calls, but yeah. So somehow a American airlines confirmed that it was legit, that they understood that it was going to be honored on Monday morning. And then it continued.

Like I couldn't believe it didn't get pulled within a couple of hours after it. Cause at that point already one mile at a time from the wing, they both written about it. They've got plenty of readers who understand the implications there. We had plenty of people who had recognized it by that point. I knew there were lots of people donating a bunch of money. And throughout Monday, I kept refreshing the page, expecting this to be pulled. And I couldn't believe that it wasn't. Right, right. Then what? Then Tuesday morning. And it still wasn't pulled. And at that point I started to really think, oh, because there's no way we haven't run through the, you know, the miles at this point. Right. I mean, the bucket of miles has to be gone. And then surely, sure enough, within a few hours into Monday or Tuesday morning, you know, nine, 10 a.m., something like that, 11 a.m., the site went down. The Simply Miles site went down. Nobody could log in. Or if you did log in,

it took forever. And then eventually there was a banner that said that they ran out of the miles at midnight on the 13th, which means one minute after 11.59 p.m. on Sunday night. In other words, about 12 hours before they told on our view from the way, which is obviously not what they really meant. You know, they, they really meant midnight or after 1159 p.m. Monday. So, you know, but, but that's what they wrote. So what crazy thing did simply miles do on Tuesday morning? It was put up that bad. Cause then everybody panicked. Right. Cause at that point it was like, that would have been the time that that said would have been 12 hours before they confirmed that the promo was legit and going to be honored and so at that point on monday

lots of people who probably over the weekend were skeptical and thought you know what i'm not going to get in on this because it's too good to be true on monday after american provided the statement to gary surely a lot of that skeptical crowd donated a bunch of money. I donated more. So did I. So did I. So, OK, all right, we're in then. Let's go, American. You know, let's do it. Right. And and so that brings us, I guess, closer to where we are now. And that is to say that that we don't know. American pulled the promotion. They had that confusing wording for a hot minute. They took that down.

It was only about 15 minutes that it showed the weird midnight time that they ran out of miles. And now it just says that the promo is over, at least now being the time when we're recording this, because there's a chance something could change between the time we record this and publish it. But All American has said so far is they gave a statement to view from the wing saying that they are working with MasterCard to get people the miles they were promised basically. Right, right. So it seems pretty certain that anyone who did the deal like correctly, you know, had linked their credit card correctly ahead of time and then did the deal that they should get their miles if they did it on Monday. I don't know what will happen for those who did it

after midnight Monday night, you know. Hopefully, everybody who got in before the banner popped up will be fine. I don't know. I mean, I hope so, too, because I did a bunch of other offers Monday night and, you know, it was around midnight. I don't know when I checked out, it was before, was it after? I don't remember, but, but the band was still there. The 5X thing

was still there. So I assumed I was going to get the miles. And, and at the end of the day, those purchases are things I was like, Oh, that's a good enough deal that I'll be happy with buying it and getting the miles. And I'm not going to cry myself to sleep if those don't go through, but, but there are some people who will cry themselves to sleep if the donation angle doesn't go through, at least potentially. So we should talk about, you know, there's a couple of things I want to talk about. Let's come back to that. I'm going to table that for two seconds and go back to were we wrong about the decision not to headline this? What do you think in hindsight, looking at it now, were we wrong not to have published from

the beginning that the charity angle was there? I don't think so. I actually think it worked out pretty well because, you know, had it all had, had a view from the wing and one mile time and TPG all posted like right after we did, because they saw our headline, you know, they would have posted right after seeing our headline. I think that all the, that, that it would have had to like shut down quicker before Gary could get that confirmation from people Monday morning that it was actually intended. And so everybody who is being rightfully careful and not jumping in would have been left out of the loop. Whereas the way it turned out,

I guess means justify the ends. People were being careful, at least had a chance on Monday to get in on it. But we still don't know. When will we know? How soon are we going to find out? I will be surprised if we know by the time this podcast publishes. So this deal began on December 11th. Well, really on the 10th. I'll get back to that in a second. We published it on the 11th. And now as we record this, it's the 16th, which is American Airlines, I should say, confirmed it on the 13th, pulled it on the 14th. It's now December 16th as we record this. And I would be shocked if we know by the time this publishes on the 18th, I assume it's going

to take at least another week. So maybe in the couple of days before Christmas, we'll find out. And I'm sure this is one prediction that I am sure about that between the moment I say this and the moment that American Airlines confirms it, people will continue to panic and be like, where is it? I don't see anything pending. Does anybody have anything pending yet? Does anybody see anything? Is there any confirmation? Have you gotten an email? And I'm just going to be like, chill out, guys, relax. It's going to take a minute here for them to figure it out. Because at this point, they got to be on the hook for millions and millions and millions of miles. And when I say they, I mean MasterCard, because

in this case, it seems that American Airlines was selling the miles to MasterCard and MasterCard, at least from what we've heard, was funding at least the lion's share of this promotion. So I have to look at it and say, it makes sense why American confirmed it on Monday, maybe because American's the seller here. They had nothing to lose. MasterCard is probably the one that is saying, wait a second, we didn't intend to buy this many miles. And, you know, of course, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place where they're like, we didn't want to buy that much. And Americans like, well, that's what people got. And and of course, MasterCard's like, well, what do we do now? Do we tell the charity that we're not going to pay out these people that donated to the charity? I mean, the optics of that a couple

weeks before Christmas are not particularly good. So I'm sure that the lawyers and the executives are discussing this and that's going to take a few days because they have to wait for transactions to post and blah, blah, blah. So chill out if you're listening to this. Oh man. If it's, if it is MasterCard, as you say, which I believe you, heads are going to roll. I hate to say that, but, but this, I don't know how much it would cost them to pay out entirely, but it's not going to be a small amount of money. You know, I'm thinking that the alien starts with a B not an M, but I don't know. Um, or maybe hundreds of millions there and some ill feeling people in the, in the office. Yeah. I mean, I talked about how I, I, to have been a fly on the wall when the conservation

international computers put it up and they saw all these, these donations rolling in, but to have been a fly on the wall in the MasterCard office, the moment that somebody realized what they had gotten themselves into could not have been particularly good either. But, but, but backing up for a second, right, I'm going to take a little bit of the opposite side, because I was the person probably most vocally saying, no, we shouldn't publish the 240 X on Saturday. And I think everything that Greg said makes sense. I think that it probably did make it last a little bit longer, probably gave a lot of people an extra chance. But in hindsight, now, I have since realized that on Friday the 10th, Bougie Miles

posted about this opportunity and I missed it. I don't subscribe. I didn't subscribe. I do now. I didn't subscribe to Bougie Miles. Bethany Walsh at Bougie Miles had posted the Simply Miles offer on Friday the 10th. And in her post, she wrote about the 240X charity angle. And I just didn't see that. Had I seen that on Friday or on Saturday when I was putting together our post, I might have done it differently. At that point, it was out there in the wild, so to speak. And it might have been wrong, actually, to have done that for all the reasons that Greg said.

It might have been the wrong decision. But once it's out there. Well, maybe, except I kind of agree with you. If you had seen it on Bougie Miles' site, then there's no reason to assume, even though it turned out to be this way, that One Mile a Time, View from the Wing, et cetera, wouldn't have also seen it. Now, they clearly didn't because they referenced our post when they posted, which was great for us, but had we known, I mean, it would have been much nicer for bougie miles to get all that, um, referral credit or link backs, I guess. So, um, so, so I might've done that a little bit differently had I known, but yeah,

I only learned that last night on Twitter. I just happened to catch a Twitter conversation and I was like, Oh, Oh, I did not know that. Hey, that. I knew that the promo came out on Friday the 10th or maybe before because a reader had forwarded us the email on Friday the 10th about it. And I just didn't have a chance to look at the promo because Simply Miles in the past has been like meh for the most part, not super exciting. The reader had said that it was really good, but I had a lot else on my plate on Friday. And I was like, I just don't have a chance to look at it right now. So Saturday morning, I started looking at it and I was like, Oh, wow, there's something to see here.

And then I checked like doctor credit and one mile at a time, some other sites see if they had written about it. So it doesn't look like anybody's written about it yet. I should have checked bougie miles, I just didn't think to. And so anyway, long story short, we might have done that differently had we realized, though, like you said, I think it probably lasted longer than it would have. So we can be thankful at least for that part of it. That it worked out. And, you know, we don't know what the right answer is. We're not trying to pat ourselves on the back and say, oh, we did the right thing. It's, you know, whatever we do, we're trying to do the best thing for everybody, but, but we're not always going to get it right. And we'll never, and we'll never know whether we got it right or wrong.

Well, I'll tell you when we'll know whether we got it right or wrong. We find out whether or not anybody gets these miles. Right. So speaking about getting the miles, so I know you donated. So, I mean, how big did you go? Did you go really big and, and why? Because I I'm, I'm very curious. Let's start there big did you go? Did you go really big and, and why? Because I I'm, I'm very curious. Let's start there. Did you donate? Did you go really hard at this? What, what did you think? So over the weekend, I donated a thousand dollars and that would have given me 240,000 American airlines miles if it worked. And I thought about going bigger at that time, but I very much felt like I don't need more

American Airlines miles. I have lots of them. I've used a lot recently to book some cutter flights, business class flights, and Q suites, but I think I'm going to have to cancel most of them. So I'll get those miles back. So, so, you know, why would I get more? Why would I pay to get more American airlines miles when I don't need anymore? A few months ago about a chance to buy miles and you were like, yeah, no, I'm not buying American airlines miles. I, you know, fool me once I bought a bunch of American airlines miles

years ago and I haven't been using them and it's been years and I haven't gone through the pile I bought. That's right. That's right. It was so long ago. It was U.S. Airways miles when I bought them for like, I think it was 1.1 cent each. And then they sat around forever. And so it was like, well, you know, that might have been a good deal sort of objectively if I'd use those miles for good redemptions. But since I didn't, it was obviously a terrible deal.

Right. Which, I mean, it's worth repeating there. If you're going to buy miles and sit on them forever and ever, it's a terrible deal because you paid more than the face price for those miles. Because, I mean, it's not money anymore. It's not cash. It's not earning interest or invested or anything else. So whatever money you could have earned in interest between now and then, you should add to the

purchase price and say, it really cost me more than whatever it is I paid because I've tied it up in this. So they've gotten even more expensive and you bought more. I mean, what crazy thing did Greg DeFreak with my order this week? I did. So on Monday, after we got confirmation that it was intentional, the 240X, I bought $4,000 more. So I'm altogether $5,000 in for, what is it, over a million? 1.2-ish million miles, yeah. So what am I insane? You must be insane. I do want to know because I also went similarly strong at this, but I have a different set of reasons.

I think I don't know. I don't get it. I don't know why you did it. Why'd you do it? Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's a bunch of things going on at once here. One is that the charity sounds good. Like, like I'm happy to donate to a good charity.

It got a decent score on Charity Navigator, which I often double check there. It's not a huge percentage of their money that goes to admin, for example, which I really like. So I feel good about donating the money, even if it doesn't work out, you know, um, the other, then there's almost certainly some, some piece of this that is an irrational FOMO fear of missing out. Right. You, you know, everyone else is jumping in. Um, I was aware, I was aware, well, I was aware that Nick had gone heavier than me initially. And so, uh, you know, that's personal experience knowing someone doing more, but I also knew of people doing much more. So there's that.

But then ultimately what it was, was this, that it sounds kind of nice to have miles on hand that are so cheap, basically, or acquired so cheaply that if I spend them for one cent per point value, I still got a great deal. I bought these for less than half of what the value is when I redeem for just one cent each as an example. And so it's kind of neat to think that, like, all right, if I'm planning a trip and I want to fly, remember, you know, American has a lot of partners, including domestically now with JetBlue and Alaska. So flying domestically, I don't have to fly AA to use these miles. And flying internationally. Of course, they actually have some, some good deals on some great partners. And, um, so, so that's, that's pretty cool. And, and I,

I wouldn't have to work like so often when I'm, when I'm looking at booking a flight, I try to, you know, I do a lot of work comparing the value I'm getting. I don't want to use my miles for a poor value redemption, but sometimes you don't really have any choice. I feel like these miles, if they actually come in, they're going to be my scrap pile. It'll be like, oh, there's no good value award for this. Maybe it's like holiday time trip to Florida or Hawaii or something that's in high demand. That's okay.

I'll just spend the American Airlines miles. And, and so it's, it's like a big slush fund. Right. It's exactly what it is. There's a scene from a movie. I don't even know what the movie is called and there's a lot of adult language in it. So I'm not going to get too deeply into it, but there's a scene in a movie with John Goodman and Mark Wahlberg where, you know, they explain the idea of having so much money that you don't care about anything, basically. Like it doesn't matter. You can have what you want, do what you want, because you have the base that you need. And, and, and that's exactly what I felt like when I saw this, I was like, this is going to be my pile. Exactly. Like you said, where I'm going to be

like, it doesn't matter if I want to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to use my cheap miles or, you know, or bring my whole family and it's not going to be a big deal. It's not going to cost very much because now of course I need four passengers on flights just for my immediate family. So flights get much more expensive, but sometimes Cutter, you know, has all four seats on a Q suites flight open. And, you know, was I going to burn all of those American airlines miles on four passengers? I don't know now. Yeah, now I am, you know, when I get that chance. So, um, so I, I definitely looked at it from that perspective and I looked at it from the perspective. I think it's worth noting. It's, I looked at it from the perspective of if this doesn't come through, it's still not a bad deal. Like you're going to get the 40 X

no matter what, so to speak. I think, I think that that part of the promo is almost guaranteed come through. It's whether or not the extra 200 comes through that I'm not totally sure about. But for that reason, I donated the 5,000 on day one. And before we published it, I donated $5,000, figuring about the if I only get 40 miles per dollar, if I don't get the extra 200 that we expect to, but just the 40, then that's 200,000 American Airlines miles, which, you know, if you just for easy math value them at one and a half cents each, then we're talking about $3,000 worth. And I would value it in that range because I know that I'll probably, if I only have that many miles, I'll probably only use them for international business class flights where that's a conservative value still. So, you know, around $3,000 worth of miles or so. So, okay. So I'm going to down 2000, so to speak, if I look at it that way. And that was an amount that I could live with donating to a decent charity,

especially because I haven't donated as much in past years as perhaps I would have been able to. So I kind of felt good about the chance that, you know, here I'm positioned, I can afford to do it and I'll probably get a decent return and maybe an amazing return in the charity, you know, comes out of this well too. So I thought there's nothing to lose here. There's no, in my mind, there was no loss. Even if I was coming out a little bit behind, I was getting a decent value. So, so that's where I started. And then I did that on Saturday. We did that out of my wife's account because back when simply miles started, uh, you needed an American airlines mastercard to sign up. That's not the case anymore. Any mastercard will do these days. The Brex card

didn't work for some reason, but almost any other mastercard should work. So her mastercard, her American airlines mastercard was the one I had handy. So I had signed her up initially, and I just didn't even bother with myself because I was lazy. And I was like, you know what? I don't need that. I can log into hers and see what offers there are if I got to write about something because I wasn't that interested in most of the offers. So she had the established account and I didn't. So when this offer came around, we had to donate out of her account. So she donated the $5,000 on Saturday in order to earn the big miles payout. And I thought, okay, that's nice. I'll just use for stuff. Like when Greg and I are going to go to the Maldives for fun and, uh, and having a separate account to book those out of is maybe not bad because it's like another slush fund. And in this case I can keep, when I need all four people on one PNR, I can just book that out of her

account every time and then have this other account to book my own stuff when we do frequent mailers. So I was like, oh, you know what? That's how I justified donating another thousand on Monday. So I was like, okay, 1,000 more for a decent little small slash fund on the side. And I didn't want to go too much harder than that without knowing whether or not this thing was going to get honored. If I knew that it was, I don't know. Would I have gone gone anymore? I'm not sure that I really need to invest more in the unknown future of American Airlines Advantage, right? I mean, probably one and a half, from the perspective of, okay, I got to book four seats. So if I want to book something at 60,000 miles, it's going to cost me 240 each way. We're talking almost a half million round trips. So it's really only a few trips that it covers, even at the 1.2 or 1.5 million. So there was the part of me that had the fear of missing out that was like, man, I could buy enough miles for the

rest of my life here. But I don't think I would have been comfortable if it didn't pan out, putting any more money into it. Right, right, right. One of my favorite Slack conversations about this was, I think it was you said, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the conservation international offices where they see all this money. I can't imagine. And I have no idea why. I believe in generosity. And like I said, I haven't donated as much as I probably should have in past years, but I still am happy to usually to contribute to things. I am not the kind of person who has ever donated $6,000 to a single charity at one time before. So that's just not been in my wheelhouse. And I have to imagine I'm not the only person in that boat who donated a lot of money

to Conservation International this week. So they, and even people who just donated, I don't know, again, I'm not a tax guy, but I think this year, what, $300 a person you can donate and write off the top of your taxes without having to itemize, I think is what it is. Yeah, I think that's what it is because a lot of people reference that in comments. And I think there were a lot of readers that donated $300 or $600 just in order to meet that, figuring, ah, I'm going to be able to write that off. So this is cheaper for me anyway. And I'm still getting the $240 potentially miles per dollar. And really, if you're just on a small

donation, like, I mean, we're talking about big numbers that maybe not everybody would be interested in donating, but I mean, for every hundred, you're talking 24,000 miles. So donating $300, you're talking more than 70,000 American airlines miles with such a small donation. I mean, that's unbelievable. That's amazing. And, and write back about this, we don't know what is legitimate to write off, if anything, from this, because you are getting something in kind that is worth actually more than you donated, arguably. It's hard to argue that it's less. And so, you know, by some interpretations, that would mean that you can't write off any of it true so i we we are not tax advisors we don't know what the absolute right answer is there but

you do you talk to your tax tax advisor and figure out how you want to approach that i don't know yet i'm gonna if if the miles come in i'm gonna send an email to my accountant and say yeah what do you think? And whatever his advice is, that's all we'll do. Very good. All right. So pretty crazy. Interesting.

We didn't headline it right away. We talked about it. I think it lasted longer. We each went a little bit harder into it than we even did at the beginning, in the end. And now we wait. I think, actually, I'm excited at the beginning in the end. And now we wait. And this is the, I think actually I'm excited at the time of recording this and who knows, maybe my perspective will have changed by the time this publishes, but I'm excited at the time we're publishing this,

because I think if there was no intention to honor it, we would have known that already. So I think the fact that it's taking some time and that a American has said that they're working to try to get this honored. I really feel like there's enough pressure on American and MasterCard and the fact that they're taking so much time with it that I think they are trying to find a way to make this work. So I feel pretty good. I hope you're right. And I'm hoping that the answer is not going to be something like, yes, you get your million miles, but we're going to give them to you a thousand miles a year or something like that. No, the one thing I should say that is going to give me some pause and I'm going to have to be

careful about, I think, is that part of me when I did this and was looking at all the miles was thinking, oh, well, this is great. I can also then help friends if they want to book a trip and book seats for somebody or a family member and do it as a gift or something for Christmas or whatnot. But there's part of me that's going to be a little hesitant with that, thinking that obviously this type of deal would have also appealed to mileage brokers who sell award tickets. An American will surely be looking for that type of activity to clamp down on anybody they think is selling miles. So that unfortunately is going to make me hesitant to book tickets for anybody else other than my immediate family, which is too bad because I'd like to have the freedom to

use those miles as I'd like, but at least for the foreseeable future, I'll probably just keep those close to the vest. Yeah. I mean, if they're truly friends of yours then i i i think what happens is is they get like stopped at the airport and asked uh you know who is the person yeah i think so too but spent the miles and that kind of thing and and they would know the answer i guess uh so maybe it'd be okay but yeah i understand i understand yeah i mean but i i definitely think i would use it you know for my niece and her husband example, when they want to travel. It would feel, because yeah analyze it, the more points feel like money or a

different form of currency. And that's good for making logical decisions about how to spend your points, but it's not good for feeling the joy of free. Whereas in this case, if we spent so little and got so many miles, it might just bring that back for the kind of awards. For sure. I hope so too awards i hope so i hope so too here's here's hoping all right okay so that i think then brings us to this week's post roast post roast time are you ready with a roast greg yeah okay yes yes yes all right so thursday morning you published your favorite all-time favorite award redemption. Guilty as charged.

I did. And what you did is you waited, purposely waited until about 20 seconds before we started recording this show to publish the darn thing so that I couldn't roast it. So that's my roast is that you tried to do a loophole here and I'm not buying it. So you get roasted anyway. And you know, I'm going to self roast because as you started to mention that, I was like, Oh shoot, I forgot to put the table of contents in that post. So now I thought for sure that's what you were going to roast me on. Oh darn it. I meant to do that. So as soon as we're, by the time you hear this, there's going to be a table of contents in that post. But, uh,

but anyway, yeah, so I did, I sure did. That, uh, it was not an expected morning. Let's put it that way this morning. So, uh, but you know, you'll have that sometimes. So, um, so all right, if that's it, I don't have a roast for you, but I do have a question of the week. So this week's question of the week comes via email from Derek. And so Derek says that he was looking at using the fine hotels and resorts credit on his Amex platinum card. The consumer platinum card comes with a $200 annual fine hotels and resorts credit. That's a calendar year credit. So you can use it now and you can use it again next year. So we use it by the end of 2021. Anyway, you can use it now and use it again next year. So he's looking at booking a stay that costs $498. He says, if I use Planet,

which is American Express's feature to pay in installments, if I use Planet, I can split it into three monthly payments of $166.27 in December, January, and February. It looks like this would trigger the credit as it's continuing to advertise the $200 credit when I check out. So I could use most of the $200 credit this year, $166.27. And then $166.27 in January when the credit resets. And finally, $33.73 the remainder in February for the final payment, making my out-of-pocket pretty low. It also looks like I can cancel for free as long as the hotel offers free cancellation. This planet doesn't appear to negate the cancellation policy. Does this all look correct and make sense to you? What do you think?

Wow. I love it. I like that idea. I have no idea if it'll work, but I, I, I would guess it would. So I'm looking forward to hearing the answer, but do you know, do you know a better answer than what I just said? I guess it won't. So I was, I wasn't sure.

I wondered what you would say because my first read of it was exactly Greg's read of it. I was like, oh, that's kind of brilliant. And then I thought about it a little bit more and I was like, no, he tricked me for a minute and into thinking it was brilliant. But then I realized it probably isn't because Planet is American Express's pay over time feature. You're paying American Express over time. You're're paying American Express over time. You're not paying the merchant over time. So like, for example, if you bought something from Best Buy and you do a planet with it, Best Buy is getting paid all at the beginning.

It's just Amex is getting paid back later. So, and I wanted to bring this question of the week up specifically because I'm glad that Greg said, oh yeah, that sounds good. Cause that was what I thought at first too. And I could see other readers thinking the same thing. but in this case, I think Amex travel or whoever it is, this Amex fine hotels and resorts, that department is going to get the full $500 right away. It's just, you're paying off your credit card bill slowly instead. So I don't think that'll work. But, but what's, I'm wondering what's showing up on your statement, you know, cause cause let's take the Best Buy example. Is it showing up as a new Best Buy charge,

even though under the covers, Best Buy got all their money right away? Is it showing up as a Best Buy charge? And if so, in this case, is it showing up as a fine hotels and resorts charge, in which case I kind of doubt they would sort of police it somehow to make it not work. But I have no idea. I have no idea how it shows up because I've never been interested in doing that kind of me either. And, you know, the way I was thinking about it might be different than the way it is, because the way I was picturing it was planet usually is an after the fact thing. Right. Where you you at least that's the way I've seen it advertised. Like you you pay for something, it pass by, let's say. and then Amex says, hey, do you want to use Planet? You can split up the payments over a few months. However, in this case, it sounds like the reader is saying Planet is being advertised

during the checkout process. And so maybe you're right, Greg. Now I'm rethinking the answer that I gave to Derek via email because, yeah, I could see a situation where maybe it does post differently. I really don't know. So there's our answer. We don't know. If you find out, you know, we have no idea. I thought I had the answer, which is prepared to be like, nope, that's not going to work. Don't do it. And now, now, Greg, you just ruined that. At least our answer of we don't know is more accurate than any predictions we made. Goodness knows. Goodness knows.

Much better. What I thought you were going to ask me was a question we get a lot, which is, I still have my $200 fine hotels and resorts credit unused this year, and it's coming to the end of the year. I want to stay somewhere next year. Can I book a stay for next year and get the coming to the end of the year, I want to stay somewhere next year. Can I book a stay for next year and get the $200 back now? And the answer is yes, you can. The only downside to that is if it comes next year and you cancel that reservation and you're

not even allowed to change it. So that's all you can really do is cancel it. If it's not the right day or you want to stay somewhere else, then they'll claw back the 200. And there's no way then to earn back the 2021 $200 credit. You'll have the 2022 credit, of course. But I went ahead and did that, by the way. So I've talked on here about how I have an upcoming Miraval stay, which I'm excited about in Arizona, and that I had booked two nights at the Ritz Dove Mountain before the Miraval stay using free night certificates. I actually went ahead and canceled that and booked. I had two $200 credits in my wife's name for fine hotels and resorts found a another place in Tucson that that looks good only costs a little bit over $200 a night. And so we booked two nights there instead. So

we'll we'll get another another place to try that. That looks really nice. That's great. Yeah. You know, we were in the situation where we've got a couple of years to and so I'm just I'm hesitant to book something for next year. Just because of the chance that, like you said, if you have to cancel, I mean, you know, who knows the plans change COVID when you didn't expect it. Right. I mean, like things happen and. Right. Right.

But there's no downside to doing it if you book it at the end of this year, because you'll have known by then that you didn't use it for anything else. So just book it and hope you do stay there. And if you don't, nothing extra. That's true. Okay. So there you have it. We don't know what we don't know.

And we suggest you do what you should do. So thank you very much for that. That brings us to the end. If you enjoyed today's discussion and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox so you can find out the next time there's an offer for 240 miles per dollar spent or whatever it might be. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on social media, wherever you're

listening to this. Please like it, give us a thumbs up, leave us a review, enable notifications, subscribe, et cetera, et cetera. We appreciate all that stuff and we'll see you guys again next week thank you very much and a quick message to the guy talking to richard at the built rewards ceremony thingy in atlanta just hello what's up so hopefully you were listening to the end no we don't know your name but we know you were there we know you're there we know you're excited uh that richard is is uh friends with with uh man next so it's true all right all right bye everybody